[extropy-chat] Interesting comment on a blog

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

[Talking of a friend] She's saying that Francis Fukuyama and Leon R.
Kass and other prominent bio-Luddites are right to fear transhumanism,
but perhaps not for the reasons they think. Transhumanism, she says,
can be seen as a sort of intentional sub-speciation; when two distinct
subspecies compete in the same ecological niche for the same
resources, conflict is often the result.

And she's right. For the bulk of human society, we have found it very
easy to dehumanize those whose skin is a different color. Just
recently, on another forum I read, people were expressing discomfort
and shock because other people ink their bodies or wear jewelry in
unconventional places, and express doubt that such people can fit into
society in a professional way. It need not be the machines that rebel,
Cylon-style, against the humans; the humans are more than capable of
starting the conflict, with our inbuilt fears and prejudices,
ourselves. If we can not handle people who look a little bit different
from us, ir decorate their bodies a little bit differently, how will
we handle people who look nothing like us, or do not have human bodies
at all? It is no accident, I think, that in the Matrix, is is the
humans, not the machines, who (literally) throw the first stone.

http://tacit.livejournal.com/193675.html